The Belle Isle Conservatory on Belle Isle in Detroit on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. The Detroit city council recently just turned down a deal that would lease the park to the state for 30 years. / Kimberly P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press

The Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit. / Diane Weiss/Detroit Free Press

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Belle Isle may be a Detroit jewel, but it isn't going to get the polishing it needs without money.

Let's make that a whole lot of money.

Nobody knows exactly how much it would cost to fix all of Belle Isle's numerous problems, from walking paths clogged with fallen trees to historic structures badly in need of repair. Certainly, a comprehensive figure would run into the tens of millions of dollars, perhaps hundreds of millions.

"I'd probably have 12 No. 1 priorities," said Keith Flournoy, manager of the island park for the city. "The island needs money, no secret."

"When we talk about what the park needs, you and I could talk forever," she said.

In the wake of last week's refusal by the Detroit City Council to consider leasing the island to the State of Michigan, the question of who will pay to cure the island's ills still begs an answer.

The conservancy recently raised $900,000 to fix the roof of the historic horse stables on the island and another $900,000 to build a comfort station on the island's west end. But those amounts just hint at how much more needs to be done.

In 1999, the Detroit architecture firm Hamilton Anderson Associates produced an award-winning master plan for the island that called for reconfiguring some island roads and making multiple other changes and improvements. Rainy Hamilton, president of the firm, said last week that the plan, even in the late '90s, could have cost about $180 million to implement. The City Council has never adopted it.

It's not clear how much the State of Michigan would have contributed over time, had the lease deal been approved, but almost certainly it would have been millions more than the financially strapped City of Detroit could have afforded.

Any new estimate of the cost to fix all of the island's problems would depend on the scope of work to be done, but clearly the cost would be huge.

"It's like your house," Earley said. "How can you ignore it for years and not have to do something for it?"

The basics

Earley and others agree that keeping the island clean and safe should be the first priority. That means cleaning up the trash that mars picnic grounds and other areas and reopening the padlocked comfort stations that house toilets.

They are padlocked because the city cannot afford to pay workers to clean them. Instead, portable toilets have been placed outside the comfort stations.

The island's walking trails though the wooded east end are clogged with fallen trees and other debris, a problem the city cannot afford to fix. "There are walking paths all through that forest, but you can't even find them because it is so overgrown," Earley said.

In the same way, the island's network of canals, designed for canoeists and kayakers to enjoy, are equally impassable because of debris and fallen trees that have not been cleared.

Many picnic shelters need repair, and many of the picnic benches in or near the shelters need to be fixed or replaced.

Historic structures

The real money comes with needed repairs for historic structures.

• The aquarium, opened in 1904 and designed by Albert Kahn, was closed by the city for lack of funds in 2005. It reopened last year with limited weekend hours thanks to conservancy volunteers. Vance Patrick, co-chair of the conservancy's aquarium committee, said a $75,000 grant helped pay to repair the roof last year.

But only about a third of the aquarium's fish tanks have been restored, and the facility still operates on an all-volunteer basis. The city, when it shut down the aquarium, estimated that staffing the facility and other operational costs would run at least $500,000 a year. Some of that would be offset by ticket sales, Patrick said.

The future wish list includes upgrading the bathrooms to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act standards. "If we won the lottery, we could spend a million dollars on the building," Patrick said.

• The Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, another Albert Kahn design that dates to 1904, needs new, energy-efficient glass panes and multiple other upgrades. Fans of the conservatory also would like to see the formal gardens that once graced the grounds restored.

• The Detroit Boat Club building, dedicated in 1902, closed in 1996. The city owns the structure, which is used occasionally by a local rowing club but needs substantial repairs. Depending on the scope of the work, which may include new heating and electrical systems as well as new docks, the cost could run in the multimillions of dollars.

• The historic casino dates to 1907 and is one of the island's most popular gathering spots. But this structure needs tuck-pointing on its exterior brickwork, as well as other repairs.

• The Nancy Brown Peace Carillon, built in the 1940s, has suffered from neglect and vandalism over the years and needs maintenance.

• The James Scott Memorial Fountain, built in 1925, remains the most elaborate Beaux Arts fountain in the region, but thieves have stolen the copper pipes needed to make it run, and contractors hired to do repairs in recent years destroyed a delicate Pewabic tile installation in the process. The city has surrounded the fountain with a fence to keep out scavengers, but it appears to do little good.

• The historic horse stables have long suffered from neglect.

"When I went through the attic a few years ago, it was a scary place," Earley said last week of the stables. "The holes in the roof had been there for decades."

The conservancy repaired those holes, but the building needs more work, as do other century-old buildings nearby.

Other problems

The island is now about twice the size it was when Europeans arrived three centuries ago, thanks to enlarging it with land-fill, which took place at various times in its history. But the island is so flat and low-lying that standing water becomes a problem after heavy rains. A new drainage system needs to be designed and built.

Shoreline erosion needs to be addressed. The defunct Belle Isle Zoo is overgrown and needs to be renovated or replaced by something new.

Meanwhile, invasive species have become a problem, said Mebby Pearson, chair of the conservancy's environmental committee. She wrote her master's report on the island's vegetation when she earned a degree in urban planning from Wayne State University.

Phragmites, an invasive weed, now covers about 9 acres of the island and about one-third of the island's coastline, Pearson said. Volunteers and the city try to eradicate it with controlled burns, but it requires constant vigilance.

Meanwhile, other nonnative species, including buckthorn and Japanese knotweed, have been spreading, she said. Volunteers contributed more than 7,300 hours of work during 2012 to remove invasive species, Pearson said. But dead trees that might fall at any time and other potential dangers make some parts of the Belle Isle forest unsafe for volunteers.